`The Hobbit` ripped apart with negative reviews

Wellington: Film critics have started weighing in on Sir Peter Jackson’s take on ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’, keeping the length and look of the film in full-focus, it has been revealed.

Daily Telegraph writer Robbie Collin claimed that the movie not only bored him rigid but also broke his heart as a lover of Tolkein, it has been revealed, and launched a scathing review of the movie. Using a phrase from JRR Tolkein to describe Bilbo Baggins’ world-weariness, Collin said that the film is “like butter that has been scraped over too much bread”. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey barely leaves the driveway,”Stuff.co.nz quoted him as writing for The Telegraph. “The film lasts for 11 minutes short of three hours, and takes us to the end of chapter six in Tolkien’s original novel, which falls on page 130 of the official movie tie-in edition,” he wrote. He said it works out to be around half an hour per chapter, and one minute and 20 seconds per page. Furthermore, he said that splitting the story into three “incredibly long” films will mean more cash at the box office, but will come at the cost of artistic worth and entertainment. “This film is so stuffed with extraneous faff and flummery that it often barely feels like Tolkien at all - more a dire, fan-written internet tribute,” he wrote. Collin also expressed distaste at shooting the film at 48 frames per second rather than 24, which is the industry standard. According to him, the intention was for this effect to make the film look smoother but it just makes everything look fake. “The unintended side effect is that the extra visual detail gives the entire film a sickly sheen of fakeness: the props look embarrassingly proppy and the rubber noses look a great deal more rubbery than nosey,” he said. “I was reminded of the BBC’s 1988 production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and not in a good way,” he wrote. The only aspect of the film that seemed to have pleased Collin was Andy Serkis’ performance as Gollum. On the other hand, a film critic for The Guardian said that if there is anyone who can make the audience love the “epically supercharged” film, it is Peter Jackson. Though Peter Bradshaw also dubs the film “whoppingly long”, he also said the film is on track to reach the same acclaim as the Lord of the Rings. He said it will be a “triple box-office bonanza”, achieved by “pumping up the confrontations, opening out the backstory and amplifying the ambient details, like zooming in on a Google Middle Earth.” “Before you grow accustomed to this, it feels as if there has been a terrible mistake in the projection room and they are showing us the video location report from the DVD “making of” featurette, rather than the actual film,” he said. “Well, it grows on you. The HFR style has immediacy and glitter, particularly in the outdoor locations, where the New Zealand landscapes, in all their splendour, are revealed more sharply and clearly, and there is an almost documentary realism to the fable,” he added. ANI